


call me son

by VesperNexus



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Canon Era, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Washingdad, Wholesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:41:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22168027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VesperNexus/pseuds/VesperNexus
Summary: “He seems like a sweet boy,” Martha whispers into his shoulder, curled leisurely into him. Washington keeps a heavy hand on hers to steady himself, breathing in the scent of her after far too long.“Mmm,” he acquiesces, “he mothers me, Martha.Mothers.”Or, three times the General’s Right-Hand Man stood by his side, and one time the General stood by his.
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton & George Washington
Comments: 10
Kudos: 364





	call me son

**Author's Note:**

> this was on my desktop so i decided to finish it instead of studying  
> pointless fluff just some wholesome goodness to get you through the summer holidays

His Excellency has a shadow. A dark slender thing toiling in his stead, flitting about his heavy footsteps to snatch mutterings and commands with quick ears and a clever mouth.

The shadow is naught more than a boy, with too many protruding bones and an untamed fever in his eyes that threatens to tip toward bellicosity in a world-shuddering blink. Snowflakes dangle on the droop of his curls, drawn back tightly by his queue. Red scatters across his cheeks and blue tinges the corners of his lips. His tread resilient and he gives his leather boots no time to sink into the snow. He looks too young, too cold, too unextraordinary.

1\. 

“General.”

Washington’s back is pressed hard against the tree, bark digging into his spine. He shifts uncomfortably on the bed of snow, taking a long cold breath through his nose. But it won’t come out of his mouth. Trapped, the breath bounces about in his chest, between the prison of his ribs, _eluding_ him -

“ _General_.”

The world splutters awake in monochrome around him, white and grey blinking intermittently. A vignette blurs his vision, growing and subsiding in the way angry waves do at an untamed beached – water sifting up the coarse grains of sand to eat the scenery – _but there are no beaches here? Where -_

 _“Washington!_ ”

The breath finally comes to him. A spark galvanises his senses. Hamilton’s face is twisted in terrible anxiety, from the press of his brow to the bright whites of his eyes. A splatter of red is tucked beneath loose locks of hair which have escaped his queue. Christ, Washington thinks quickly, _he looks so young._

“Ham-” he splutters, wetness dripping around his eyelashes, “what-”

“It’s okay Sir,” the boy’s voice quakes furiously over the words before steadying, a lamb having found its footing in meadow grass, “it’s okay. They shot Buttercup from under you, and she – she – you’re fine, it’s fine, it’s fine. You’ve not broken anything I don’t think, and camp is less than half hour south on foot Sir, and we should, we have to, we…”

Hamilton is shaking, looking thin and frail and afraid for a startling moment before Washington has the sense to flatten a gloved hand on his shoulder. The touch revives him, and the boy is suddenly on his feet, drawing his General up with a strong steady arm around his waist. The strength is sudden, hidden in the tight coils of the boy’s unassuming body, and it is just as Washington expected.

Washington throws an arm around his shoulder.

2.

Hamilton hovers.

A week has passed slowly with the boy no farther than an inch from his elbow at all times, armed with steaming herbal tea or tasteless green soup or stale bread and horse jerky. Washington suspects the boy has taken to hiding provisions in his coat, ready to feed his General whenever he falters a step or presses two fingers against his head in a futile attempt to ward off an ever-present headache.

“Hamilton,” the sigh is slow and languid, drawn from somewhere warm and fond in his chest. The boy looks up quickly, quill hesitating over the yellow parchment.

“Sir?” A single word cloaks the rest, _are you okay, are you feeling ill, feint, hungry, tired –_

“I think it’s time you retire for the night, Colonel,” Washington presses the words with firmness aplenty, coaxing a plea into a command. Hamilton lets out a little cold breath and huddles further into his coat, shoulders stooping from the hard-worried line they’d been pushed to around his ears.

“Will you retire as well, General?”

He struggles not to roll his eyes, and dissuades the fight before it arises, “It should not concern you when I retire Son. You know I am well-healed.”

For a long moment, Hamilton’s face twists in a hundred hurried expressions, the bruises under his eyes turning purple to blue under the candlelight flicker. He has not argued with Washington about _Son_ since he half-carried him back to camp, and Washington knows too well not to look _this_ gift horse too particularly in the mouth.

Still, the boy looks at him and reads his face and Washington wonders what he sees and how he will try to spin this particular argument today. It is already half twelve.

“Perhaps we might finish the letter to your wife first, Sir?”

Clever boy. Washington schools his face into something stern that the boy sees right through. He’s sure of it.

“It’s been eight days since you last wrote her, Excellency...”

How is it he cannot command the boy to bed without futility? The corner of his lips lifts, crowding the lines around his left eye. “Alright, a final letter, and then-”

“And then we shall both retire for the night,” Hamilton nods with an air of diffidence, as if this is what Washington had commanded. “Understood Sir.”

He’s already pulling fresh parchment and dipping his quill in ink to ease a new suite of sweet words when Washington realises what the boy’s done.

3.

“He seems like a sweet boy,” Martha whispers into his shoulder, curled leisurely into him. Washington keeps a heavy hand on hers to steady himself, breathing in the scent of her after far too long.

“Mmm,” he acquiesces, “he mothers me, Martha. _Mothers._ ”

She snorts, very unladylike and certainly unbecoming and he struggles to stifle his objection. Washington feels the satisfaction roll through her body, knows the way her approval pulses through the feathery kisses she presses into his skin.

“Let him then.” Washington rolls to face her, blankets bunching about his waist as he does. A little fireplace cackles brokenly in the corner, casting a rhythm to the flickering sunshine split by the drapes. The light spills golden tinted shadows across his wife’s eyes. “The boy’s fiercely protective of you George. As you are of him.”

“I’m his General, it’s my _job._ ”

“It isn’t your job to adopt strays, _General._ ”

“He isn’t a stray.”

Martha raises an eyebrow, the arch of which is so perfect her disbelief is far too easy to decipher.

“George-”

“ _General-”_

The door opens with a hard and sudden jerk, startling them from where they lay on the bed. Washington sits up quick enough to catch Hamilton quickly flitting into the room, catches the moment where the words freeze in that clever mouth, the moment the boy turns a shocking red.

“Oh – Sir – Ma’am – I’m – it was urgent, there was a missive and – sorry, _sorry_ I’ll just-”

Washington is quite torn between laughing so hard his stomach turns on itself and groaning inaudibly. But Martha takes pity on the boy as he tries to make a hasty retreat, adjusting her nightgown around her shoulders.

“It’s okay Colonel, you can stay.” She smiles, and it’s so genuine her eyes are pushed into little crescents with humour, as if telling her husband, _see what I mean?_ “We weren’t being indecent.”

Hamilton splutters, and George has seen him look less like a fretting school boy when he struggled not to tread on Eliza Schyler’s toes at the Winter Ball.

“Hamilton?”

Washington’s voice grounds the boy, it seems, as Hamilton regains some of his fractured composure. It’s just past seven, anyway. The General would have been up an about an hour earlier had it not been for his lovely wife’s gently coaxing.

“A missive from General Knox, Sir. Arrive only a few minutes ago. He’s thinking of acquiescing to our plan about the vanguard and he’s arriving in Morristown by midday Sir, this is our chance to convince him and I’ve made arrangements-”

“Meet me downstairs.” Washington hurries out of bed as the boy nods briskly, “Sir. Mrs Washington.”

*

The meeting lasts north of four hours. The wine is untouched until Knox retreats to his rooms for the night. Hamilton sits to his right, arguing with a mouth as talented as his hands. The boy shapes Washington’s words with marvellous rhetorical dexterity, tactfully playing a game of war with the other General. He pushes at the right moments and when he’s close enough he pulls, drawing Knox imperceptibly closer and closer.

When it’s over, Hamilton delivers him back to the inn. Yes, delivers. Hamilton keeps him occupied with a steady flow of words until they reach his door, until Washington realises he has been escorted to the inn with no chance of a detour toward camp, toward more planning.

“Hamilton, we-”

The boy smiles at him tiredly. “Your wife awaits you, your Excellency. A carriage will be here to pick her up at dawn on the morrow.”

Once inside, he spots Martha sitting on a rickety chair at the small table, a dinner of hard bread and meat splayed generously.

“An apology from your boy,” she smiles, and it’s so very warm. Washington doesn’t bother correcting her. “Although I assured him there was nothing at all to apologise for.”

 _My boy._ It’s not like she’s wrong anyway.

4.

 _My boy, my boy, my boy,_ Washington prays with fervour, spending a completely not inappropriate time at Hamilton’s bedside.

It’s past midnight and he should be in bed. But he’s not and he can’t because Hamilton is-

“Seasonal ague,” Lafayette had muttered sombrely, shoulders stooped low, hand firm on Hamilton’s burning brow. “A few nights and he’ll no doubt be through the worst of it, your Excellency.”

He was repeating the doctor’s words, but he looked no more reassured by them. His bright eyes had been dimmed with egregious worry and he only leaves when Washington forces his hand, reminding him of the hungry troop under his command. It had been almost as difficult kicking Laurens out.

Washington contorts his body uncomfortably in the wooden chair. It has been a handful of days he has felt the passing of every minute acutely, drawn out, making salient the lack of a cool excited voice in his ear, the lack of a slender shadow treading by his elbow.

Hamilton is pale and his brow sweaty, hair fanned out messily about on his pillow. He wakes in intermittent moments, stolen, barely cogent. They are these best moments, the ones for which Washington feels like he has waited years.

 _It will pass,_ Washington reminds himself. He glances at the closed tent flap. The camp is silent, blanketed by night. With such a comfort he threads his fingers through his aide’s, curls them around a delicate wrist and relishes in the steady _thump-thump-thump_ of a pulse beneath his fingers.

“Excellency…” _dear Providence, he sounds so small._

“Shh, Alexander, sleep now.”

“Mmm…” the boy’s eyelids flicker, once, twice, thrice, as he stubbornly attempts to regain focus. “Should be workin’…”

Washington snorts, and Hamilton is conscious enough to startle at the very human, untamed sound. “It’s past midnight. You should be sleeping.”

“But-”

“I will not argue with you, Colonel. That’s a command.”

“Mmm…” He looks no more satisfied, but quickly loses the battle. Quiet breaths stutter through his lungs, and Washington brushes the back of his hand with a comforting flick of his thumb. The rise and fall of his chest is steady beneath the blankets.

Washington is there when he wakes.


End file.
